The Boy on Fire

Chapter 3

Everything was going great until I ruined everything by judo flipping a kid. Leo and I walked next to each other all the way to the pavilion and he showed me to the Hermes table.
"Guys, this is Julianna. She's going to be staying with you for a while," Leo looked at me with a slight smile. "Meet me at the Hephaestus cabin after, okay?" I nodded my head. Right after he left someone's face bent down next to mine.
"You must be a child of Hermes," an unfamiliar voice cooed. "because you have stolen my heart." My heart started beating really fast. I unattached one of my arms from the brace and balanced myself on one side. My free elbow snapped backwards and I elbowed him in the stomach. I turned around, grabbed his arm and judo-flipped him. He rolled around on the ground in pain. Everyone in the pavilion was looking right at me.
"Oh my gods, I'm so sorry!" I extended my arm to help him up and he took it. He stood up with a pained expression on his face.
"Jeez, psycho it was just a compliment! I think you broke a rib! What in Hades is wrong with you?" I felt awful. This poor kid had done nothing but gave me a compliment and I thank him by breaking his rib? Great. My first day and I was already seriously wounding other campers.
"I'm sorry! You just...scared me. That's all. Hey, uh, wanna start over? What's your name?" I asked sitting down at the Hermes table and patted the spot next to me.
He sighed and sat next to me. "Connor. Connor Stoll, head of the Hermes cabin."
"Co-head of the Hermes cabin!" Chirped another boy who looked identical to Connor, only slightly taller.
Connor rolled his eyes at the other boy and asked, "Who are you?"
"Julianna Masters. I'm a new camper here."
"Yeah, I kinda figured that out..." He muttered. He had brown hair with blue eyes. He seemed very mischievous. I made a mental note to watch my back because I had a feeling that he would try to get me back for judo flipping him. He was probably studying me right then, plotting his revenge.
Connor showed me the ropes with the offerings and the magical goblets. I offered the biggest roll on my plate to the gods, praying that my parent would claim me soon and that whoever my godly parent was could help me fit in at camp despite my disabilities. Then I asked the magic cup for my father's famous hot chocolate. It was the beginning of summer and pretty hot outside, but I didn't care. The hot chocolate reminded me of some of the only good parts of my childhood, before I was disabled.
After dinner, we had about a half hour before the campfire, so I headed for the Hephaestus cabin. I knocked on the door and a tough girl with a bandana tying back her braided brown hair answered.
"Um...I'm looking for Leo?" She nodded and led me into the cabin. It had a bunch of beds set up, like the other cabins. I wondered which one belonged to Leo. Instead of taking me to a bed she stopped in the middle of the floor and knocked on it.
"VALDEZ, GET YOUR BUTT UP HERE RIGHT NOW!" She called. I followed her example and stepped out of the way. A circle-shaped hole in the floor appeared and a bed started rising from it. Sitting on the bed was the one and only Leo. He grabbed my arm and gently pulled me onto the bed. I put my braces on the bed behind us. The bed spiraled back into the floor and all of a sudden we were in a room, which I guess was Leo's room. My mouth dropped in shock. It had a 60" flat screen TV, video games, a mini-fridge, and pretty much everything else that someone could possibly want in their bedroom.
"Wow," was all I could say. Leo was always surprising me.
"Welcome to Casa de Leo, where all of your demigod dreams come true," Leo announced with a huge grin on his face. I gave a little laugh and he scooted next to me on the bed. Our sides touched and my body tensed up. I started taking deep breaths, fighting the urge to push him to the ground. What was I thinking? Why would I push Leo to the ground?
Leo noticed my behavior and moved away. I sighed a big sigh of relief and he shook his head.
"What's the matter, Julianna?" he asked. I stared into his deep brown eyes and he stared back at me I got lost in Leoland until his voice pulled me back to reality.
"Go on," he encouraged. I felt like I could share anything with him.
"At my last school," I started, looking away from him. "this one guy forced me to be his girlfriend. He was way too arrogant, ignorant, and abusive. I hated him. One day I went over to his house to work on a science project with him. Then he took me up to his room and he..." My voice broke. I grabbed my braces from behind us and placed them on my lap. Tears started to run down my face as I covered my face with my hands. Leo handed me a tissue box. "I'm sorry. This is really hard for me to talk about. I was too embarrassed that I let him do this to me." Leo put his arm around me. My body tensed so hard I started to shake. I cried even harder and louder. Leo pulled his arm away immediately.
"Oh gods, Julianna. I'm...I'm so sorry." I couldn't believe that Leo felt sorry for me. After all he's been through. The one who should feel sorry is me!
"How could you say that? You were the one who was brutally attacked by a wacko with a monkey wrench!"
"Yeah, but at least I wasn't turned into a cripple by a psycho who obviously didn't deserve you," his face turned red from embarrassment. I had to laugh a little at that.
"Oh, Leo..." I looked around his room. Something caught my eye and I gave Leo my famous death stare.
"Leo! You have had Grand Theft Auto this whole time and haven't mentioned it to me?" I half-screamed. We ended up playing video games until it was time for the campfire. This is why I love having a friend like Leo. You could just go to their room, vent out your feelings, cry a little, then play video games with each other for 15 minutes.
The campfire was fun for a while. I even met some new friends. Leo introduced me to two really nice girls, Mandy, daughter of Apollo and Vikki, daughter of Hecate. What was great was they didn't even care about my legs! Well, Vikki might have been too hopped up on Barq's Root Beer to notice, but hey, I didn't judge! We sang songs and laughed until Percy and his girlfriend Annabeth ran in carrying a red-head who was unconscious.
"Chiron, she fainted again. We carried her here because we thought she might have a prophecy when she wakes up. Then the girl's eyes started glowing and green smoke billowed out of her mouth. Some other campers brought over a stool and propped her up on it as if they came prepared for this moment.
The girl started to speak in a gravelly voice,
"The children of forge, wisdom, and trade must go
To the coldest cave, fighting the snow
Melt the kingdom covered in ice.
There will soon be a sacrifice
For the demigod who rises above
An unbroken, yet shattered love
Although you may be weak and frail,
When the time comes, they must prevail!"
The girl slumped down on her stool and Percy ran over to catch her. A few moments later, the girl became conscious again and sat up on the stool.
"Well, what did I say?" she asked. Annabeth recited the monologue to her and the red-head turned pale. "Ugh! Can't Olympus just stay safe? We just saved it's butt with Kronos and then we saved it's butt again when Gaea woke up! Just give us a brake, people!" the girl shouted. Of course, I had no idea what she was talking about, but I figured Leo would fill me in later.
"Well, obviously this requires a quest. So one thing we have to figure out is who is the children of forge, wisdom, and trade that the prophecy mentioned." I ran through every single Greek god that I knew of through my brain. Then I decided to speak up.
"Well, I think it was talking about children of Hephaestus, Athena, and Hermes, since their symbols are the forge, wisdom, and trade," Chiron smiled at me.
"Well, I guess since I'm the head of the Hephaestus cabin, maybe I should go," Leo reasoned. "But which children of Hermes and Athena want to come with me?" he asked.
All of a sudden, everyone gasped. They all looked straight at me, their eyes wide.
"What?" I asked. "Do I have something on my face?"
Then I looked up to see an owl sitting on an olive branch, faintly glowing a startling grey color and floating above my head.
Chiron smiled slightly. "Everybody, meet Julianna Masters, Daughter of Athena,"